Soul Jazz Records’ new release Black Fire! New Spirits! is a deluxe double CD (and limited triple LP) exploring deep, radical and spiritual jazz in the USA in the period 1957-1975.

In the 1960s and into the 1970s jazz music in the USA was in an almost constant state of revolution, with the music and lives of African-American artists radicalised by the advent of the civil rights movement, Black Power, and a new spiritual awakening.

For over 20 years now Soul Jazz Records have been exploring this rich area of deep and spiritual jazz music with an array of albums such as Freedom, Rhythm and Sound, Universal Sounds of America, New Thing, Soul Jazz Love Strata East and more. Soul Jazz Records have also released a steady stream of reissues of lost and classic deep jazz releases over the years from artists such as Art Ensemble of Chicago, Steve Reid, Pharaoh Sanders and others.

This new album features groundbreaking and revolutionary artists such as Don Cherry, Archie Shepp, The Last Poets and Yusef Lateef as well as many rare and deep lost tracks from lesser known artists such as Creative Artists Ensemble, Granchan Moncur, Lloyd McNeill, Tyrone Washington and others.

This album coincides with the recent ‘Black Fire! New Spirits! Images of A Revolution: Radical Jazz in the USA 1960-75’ book, published by Soul Jazz Books, which as well as including pioneering artists such as John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Roland Kirk and Alice Coltrane also features many of the artists included in this album.

REVIEWS

"This double-disc set is the companion soundtrack to Soul Jazz's book of the same name. It documents 14 wide-ranging tracks by well-known foundational artists and those who followed the New Thing path to other realms during a fertile period during and after the Civil Rights Era. Soul Jazz has always done an admirable job both in curation and presentation." All Music